Thankful n' Thoughtfull: The Sly Stone Dedicated Chronological Listening Thread

So the verdict on Heard Ya Missed Me? I think Xgau got this one right too:

Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back [Epic, 1976]
The rhythms and vocals may not be compelling, but they're certainly unpredictable. The words aren't great, but they play the margins of black music's romantic-spiritual themes with some finesse. Anyone else and we'd be waiting until he fulfilled his potential. But he already has. B-

169. Sly & the Family Stone - Remember Who You Are (Back On the Righ Track, 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WJOw6vZNwU
Sly's first album not produced by Sly, and the extensive credits for longtime sidekick/henchman/enabler Hamp "Bubba" Banks suggest that he had a key role in getting this album together. In many ways this is the underrated gem in the back end of Sly's career; it's brief, consistent, solidly written, tightly arranged and simply delivered. In some ways it's "Fresh" Pt 2. It's also largely out of step with prevailing industry trends, existing in a hermetically sealed off universe of Sly's own, predicting nothing and in dialogue with no one.

Behind the kit is Sly's first black drummer, long-time R&B vet, George Harrison sideman and session pro Alvin Taylor, and on the bass is Keni Burke, of the Five Stairsteps (also a Dark Horse Records alumnus). Together the two provide a methodical and in-the-pocket rhythm section, hearkening back to the Newmark/Allen combo, albeit not as tricky. The rest of the credits are a little harder to work out. Sly's role is clear (vocals, keyboards, harmonica) but there's a bevvy of guitar, horns, and backing vocal credits, including some familiar ones: Rose and Freddie are both credited with backing vocals, and Robinson and Rizzo reappear as well. But in general the feel is of a more intimate ensemble, no more strings or timbales or dense orchestration; from the opening bars of the opening track it's evident that things have been scaled down.

Taylor splashes in with a brief opening fill, followed by a familiar tick-tock pattern, a straight 8th note bassline, and a wash of keyboards and guitars hitting whole notes on the downbeat as they establish a creatively circular four chord progression of minors and 7ths. Burke in particular acquits himself admirably, clearly relishing the opportunity to step into the pantheon of Sly bass players, putting his own muscular spin on a familiar style. For the chorus Sly pivots to a second four chord pattern, drops the minor chords, and brings in a bright, syncopated countermelody from the horns as Taylor opens up on the hi-hat. This verse/chorus pattern repeats throughout the song with minimal variation, the focus is on the disciplined delivery. There's no excess noise, no sloppy edits, no reverb, no distractions, just Sly doing his thing. He's in fine voice on the lead vocal, doubled by multi-tracked, stereo-panned female vocals. Lyrically he's again looking in the mirror, doling out advice about ignoring the haters and being true to yourself with his typical mix of inversions and turnabouts. Not every line connects but his knack for a clever turn of phrase still shines through here and there ("Ever feel like you're nobody / Remember you're nobody else, too").

A deftly executed, if modest, opener.

Wow, I've never heard this album. The drummer is absolutely killing it with those 16th note hats (that is a *fast* tempo for that groove, I could never).

(and yeah everything sounds fantastic)

Check out Alvin Taylor's wiki photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Taylor

OK I've never heard this album, the title scared me because it once again smacked of desperation. This OK though, I least you can hear Sly this time round.

Wow, it's short this album!

By 1979? It’s probably all they could wring out of him.

The cover to this album is hilarious. It’s as if they told him if he dressed up nice for church they’d let him release another album.

I am def. a fan of this song BTW.

I have a white label promo of this record with cool promotional stuff from the label. It rules.

actually it's a test pressing

https://www.discogs.com/release/12376571-Sly-The-Family-Stone-Back-On-The-Right-Track

170. Sly & the Family Stone - Back on the Right Track (Back On the Righ Track, 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQZT0yuMHJE
Just from a technical musicianship standpoint, things get a little more interesting here. The intro is in half-time, dominated by some remarkably agile hi-hat work from Taylor and a fleet-fingered descending bass lick, a wah-wah/phased guitar, Sly's organ, and an electric piano filligree filling in the chords. Rose, returning to the mic for the first time in several years, tentatively sings a few "heys" as a lead-in and then the track vaults forward into an up-tempo disco groove, punctuated by a great, nimble horn line as Rose delivers the titular refrain. Burke really outdoes himself with some ridiculously fluid popping as Sly's vocal enters for the verse, then the band modulates up a whole step for the chorus with the horns, Freddie and Rose returning for some swapped backing vocals. Then they repeat the intro (but no longer in half-time) and it's back to the top for another couple of verses and choruses. That's pretty much it in terms of structure, but the song doesn't really need much more - the tempo and rhythm move at a serious clip, and there's plenty for the guitars, organ and vocals to work with, lots of little licks worked into the fabric, the bass leading the way. Again everything is recorded dry and clean, very simple. The lyrics are relatively threadbare, but it's great to hear Sly, Freddie and Rose singing together again.

had not heard that funky temptations byway and it's fantastic

Pretty good but, apart from the vocals, could be anyone tbh.

171. Sly & the Family Stone - If It's Not Addin' Up… (Back On the Righ Track, 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir1bHmxF714
Takes an old bass riff and alters the phrasing slightly in order to juxtapose it against a very Newmark-style drum beat, all 16th notes on the hi-hat but laid back on the kick and snare. Really it's that rhythm section that make this song as solid as it is. The other parts, however, are not without their charms. Two guitars, two keyboards, plus a sharply enunciated horn section, are atomized, each cordoned off with their own little pocket of staccato phrases and panned separately across the stereo field, creating a bopping, ping-ponging effect. Surprisingly, there's also a burbling synth that enters midway through, adding some additional color. There's no changes, the dynamics here are all driven by the froth of constantly moving polyrhythms. Again the mix is dry and clear, each part distinct and balanced. Sly's voice sounds a little strained, and he gets some support from both male and female backing vocals (assuming one of those is Freddie) as he runs through a set of lyrics that feature some goofy lines about math and the alphabet along with Sly's usual cautionary admonitions, and a reference to his mother for good measure.

172. Sly & the Family Stone - The Same Thing (Makes You Laugh, Makes You Cry) (Back On the Righ Track, 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y_A0_spHfI
A bit underwritten, but still enjoyable for a number of reasons. For one thing there's the talkbox, which fits Sly's usual vocal acrobatics like a glove. For another there's the titular dualistic homily in the lyrics, which does not receive much elaboration but is so prototypically Sly it's amazing that he hadn't used it earlier. The slow funk tempo has a curious dynamic too it, the bass in particular peppering the rhythm with staccato pops that cut across the hi hat pattern. The guitars and organs chop up two chords, with multiple male and female vocals trailing Sly's lead. Every 8 bars the band takes a breath, Taylor hits the splash and then it's back into it, over and done with in less than 3 minutes. Short and sweet.

this one is great!

The groove on 'If It's Not Addin' Up' is clearly meant to evoke 'Thank You...', but the interlocking bass & drum groove is actually really sick.

Ooh yeah, and 'The Same Thing' is even better.

Too funky.

Wow, I was like, “talkbox?” And sure enough, that Charly issue I have of this doesn’t have any on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR9Gm-esaR0

Pretty big “Africa Talks to You” vibe to this one, esp. noticeable sans talkbox.

173. Sly & the Family Stone - Shine It On (Back On the Righ Track, 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDmuHy6pGXg
The longest track on the record, a one-chord jam stretched to almost 5 minutes. Again the rhythm section is really putting in the work. Taylor delivers another rock solid, pointillist drum part in the Newmark vein, dipping in and out of half-time but always driving forward with the hi-hat and some fancy footwork. Burke is no slouch either, his bass part is nimble and forceful, knitting together the entire song. Some of the other instrumentation is oddly static; a guitar that snaps between two notes for the entire song, and Sly's organ occasionally stepping in with just a single sustained chord. There's a slightly more adventurous wah wah guitar part, and a barely there electric piano that intermittently pokes through. Otherwise all the real melodic action is in the lead and backing vocals, the punchy horn line, and a wiggly analog synthesizer. The synth is a great addition to the overall sound, even if Sly is oddly behind the times here; he's working with sounds that Worrell and Wonder had already fully integrated into funk almost a decade ago. But this is largely beside the point for a track that works this well. It's a strong groove with plenty of detail to chew on, and Sly's vocal in particular is great, and the lyrics feature some of his best lines on the album, with weight imagery predominating: "Sometimes the pressure could feel like tons / But keep on stickin', stickin' to your guns / When you're tryin' to do your best / Don't you worry about the mess" and "One ounce of love is all they need / And a pound of care you give indeed / But when they notice only one gram / You can assume they don't give a damn".

Definitely a P-Funk feel to this one. This album has been a something of a pleasant surprise so far.

174. Sly & the Family Stone - It Takes All Kinds (Back On the Right Track, 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYis-jr7IZ4
Sly liked callbacks, his work was often in dialogue with itself. As with some of the prior tracks - "If It's Not Addin' Up"'s bassline, "Shine It On"'s quote of the descending "yeah yeah yeah" vocal melody from "Sing a Simple Song" (courtesy of Rose) - Sly repurposes another old riff, in this case the lead guitar part from Little Sister's "You're the One", which appears here as the bassline. Similarly, the one-note backing vocal recalls "Sing a Simple Song", and for good measures Sly also quotes "everybody is a star" in the lyrics, and references the album's title track as well. The lyrics in general are a retread of "both sides" tropes, similar to "The Same Thing"; the individual lines are pretty good ("Some of us don’t give a shit or shock you much at all / Others might say “I heard that” about something off the wall") and Sly's delivery is convincing.

All this hall-of-mirrors stuff aside, the song overall is consistent with the other solid, modest tunes on the album. It's a short vamp, no changes apart from a little turnaround at the end of each verse. The rhythm section's mid-tempo funk strut is again both inventive and right in-the-pocket. The airtight production carves out space for all the bopping instrumental accompaniment: electric piano, razor sharp wah wah guitars, trademark swelling horn accents. Sly's lead vocal is fun and bouncy, augmented by both female and male backing vocals. The overall enjoyable delivery papers over the laziness of the songwriting.

Another one that is an alternate version on the Charly issue I have, featuring an unbelievablly strung out vocal from Sly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-x_QUslTA4

175. Sly & the Family Stone - Who's to Say? (Back On the Right Track, 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYis-jr7IZ4
The second up-tempo number on the album, this time with some flickers of Sly's old creative spark in the arrangement. He opens the song with a headfake, a neat little syncopated riff from the guitar and bass that otherwise does not reappear in the song, played in unison over a straight 4/4 disco beat, with the 16th notes on the hi-hat. The band catches its breath for a measure as Sly's vocal creeps up and Burke leads the way, slapping and popping into the verse's one chord vamp. He's joined by the standard array of wah wah guitars, stabbed organ chords, and an oddly reggae-ish rhythm guitar part that just chops the up-beats. The drum pattern switches up for the pre-chorus and the chords modulate upwards. P-Funk again seems to be creeping in at the margins, especially with the octave-splitting male/female backing vocals in the prechorus and on those "yabadabadababa" refrains. Then it's back to the top and the pattern repeats. Some pretty goofy lyrics and lazy rhymes, Sly leaning into that pasted-on smile to keep up the levity of the proceedings, even while maintaining his usual "judge not lest ye be judged" posture."

Has anyone seen the On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone documentary that came out in 2017? I can’t find it anywhere.

― Naive Teen Idol, Friday, July 14, 2023 4:51 PM (one month ago)

Huh, interesting. You all know Questlove is currently working on his Sly documentary, right?

176. Sly & the Family Stone - Sheer Energy (Back On the Right Track, 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRmR_LeKtv4
Sly closes out the album with some extended harmonica soloing, an instrument he hadn't pulled out in years that gives the track a bluesy, country-funk flavor. The mix is cleaner and clearer than the "Riot" era, but it feels cut from a similar cloth: less structured, largely improvised on a few melodic ideas based around a simple tonal center. Taylor and Burke again provide a solid, detailed rhythmic foundation with their lurching, slow-tempo groove, with electric piano and multiple guitars circling around it. There's also some creatively voiced horn lines and nicely harmonized female vocals adding additional melodic ballast, no idea what the lyrics are. It's not a showstopper but it's fine.

1969 was a key pivot point in Sly's career, and a decade later he was at a different kind of crossroads. This is really the end of Sly as a creative force. It's the last time that Sly managed to maintain the focus to follow a full-length album through to its completion. Unfortunately (if not entirely unexpectedly), the album sank without a ripple. George Clinton subsequently threw Sly a lifeline, drawing him into his labyrinthine tangle of recording contracts, which would sustain Sly's increasingly meager output over the next few years.

177. Muruga and the Soda Jerks - Superstar Madness (Testing Positive for the Funk (Clinton Family Series Volume IV), 1980)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TabZ5ljQ1HM
This track was apparently recorded in 1980, although it was not released until 1994. Clinton connected Sly with drummer Muruga Booker, and the pair appeared on some minor P-Funk releases, including this track, with Sly playing bass. God only knows what Sly thought of this song, which is on its face unabashedly silly but also musically amateurish and several steps beneath him. There's undeniably some novelty to Sly appearing on such a strange baby-boomer-does-new-wave oddity, but apart from the surface appeal of the processed vocals, distinctly rock guitar sound and early 80s synths, the song itself is just bad - there's no real hook, the melodies (and the chords) wander aimlessly, the drums overplay a boring 4/4 rhythm, and the lyrics are just substandard food jokes, trying too hard to be some Zappa-esque version of "weird". Apart from a few bars midway through where his bass is run through a strange effects pedal, Sly doesn't have much to do besides gamely plunk along on straight 8th notes. In a career with many inexplicable detours, this is one of the most embarrassing.

178. Funkadelic - Funk Gets Stronger (Parts 1 and 2) (The Electric Spanking of War Babies, 1981)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pO-AcY44tk
Sly and George Clinton were made for each other in more way than one, and the eventual dovetailing of their careers in the 80s has the air of both inevitability and tragedy. Sly arrived in Clinton's camp just as it was unraveling, and his first appearance with P-Funk also happened to be on one of the albums that directly led to the implosion of the P-Funk empire. Sly's presence at P-Funk shows and sessions during this period does not appear to have always been welcomed by all involved, and he seems to have particularly run afoul of bass players, as evidenced by episodes recounted about Bootsy and Skeet Curtis in the P-Funk "Off the Record" book. Crack would cast a long shadow over both Sly and George over the next several decades.

Does the music bear up under scrutiny? Split across two tracks, this is certainly an odd song, not least due to the snippet of the Beatles' "She Loves You" tacked on at the end. The slow, lurching song is built around a circular guitar figure, which is overlaid with a cascading series of guitar, vocal, percussion and keyboard overdubs, with plenty of effects applied. The lumbering rhythm, which seems to shift from overtime to half-time and back again multiple times, is dotted with percussion, including a cuica.

Sly has a shared writing credit on this, but given the P-Funk camp's usual approach to song gestation it's most likely there were a bunch of different players throwing in ideas, riffs, lines and rhythms, making it difficult to precisely pinpoint Sly's specific role. The horn line (played by Rizzo and Robinson) is one obvious contribution, as is his incredibly fried, raspy vocal, which pops up in Part 1 but is really brought to the fore in Part 2. He literally sounds like a ghost, appearing in a whispery haze of smoke, until he pivots to a more throaty delivery to extensively quote Lee Dorsey's "Everything I Do Gonh' Be Funky (From Now On)" and then some energetic, growly scatting. There's bits of electric piano throughout which also bear Sly's distinctive fingerprint. The whole thing is sprawling, messy, there's an air of derangement.

179. Sly & the Family Stone - L.O.V.I.N.U. (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPTMCTPOsBM
Christgau adroitly noted of this album that Sly "often sounds as if he's not even there". This was supposed to be a triumphant return to form, with Clinton at Sly's side and solid backing from Warner Brothers, but all that fell apart and instead the album was finished up by industry vet Stewart Levine, who was fresh off producing Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes' "Up Where We Belong". Levine wasn't an entirely inappropriate choice, but if at times his more pedestrian ideas overwhelm Sly's, in his defense he was stepping into the breach to perform what must have been a truly thankless task, and Sly is likely not entirely without blame.

As a result, this album is analogous to "Heard Ya Missed Me" in the way Sly's musical approach is subsumed into a more mainstream pop/R&B format. This isn't exactly the dregs yet but it's getting close. It sounds like a Sly demo that's been thoroughly worked over and overdubbed by others. His vocal is present (albeit low in the mix and with a ton of reverb on it), as is his organ playing; and after the vamp of the verses the ascending chord changes in the chorus bear his stamp. But the rest is oddly static and lifeless. The rhythm section has no dynamics in it whatsoever, it's just steadily pumping all the way through. And the horns, clavinet, guitars and backing vocals are all pedestrian. Sly's vocal seems buried and without character; the lyrical hook of the chorus especially lazy.

180. Sly & the Family Stone - One Way (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8cwLHnwpJY
This mid-tempo pseudo-P-Funk groove isn't much of an improvement. Sly's involvement isn't even detectable until a minute in, the blandly voiced vocals and horns taking precedence. The bass player is plenty busy, and the drums are steady but the whole thing is just boring, with nothing particularly distinctive going on. The arrangement goes nowhere, just repeating the same phrases over and over, Sly's vocal and electric piano occasionally poking out.

181. Sly & the Family Stone - Ha Ha Hee Hee (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX2iFKOvj-0
There's a genuinely pretty song in here somewhere, Sly's compositional hand is evident in the mix of major 7th chords and deft transitions between verses, pre-chorus and choruses, as well as the self-referential callback to an older song (in this case "Smilin'"). The bland accompaniment, however, does the song no favors. It's not that the performance or production are bad, per se - no one's missing any notes or playing anything egregiously inappropriate - it's just that this post-Steely Dan, smooth R&B, type of sound runs counter to what makes Sly interesting, it's too glossy. At one point the rhythm section approximates the old Graham bass pattern against a standard open hi-hat disco beat, for example, but there's no heat to it. It's a lifeless formula by now. There's still some odd things here and there (references to Pasadena, the telephone operator voice towards the end).

The song is actually credited to Pat Rizzo though!

182. Sly & the Family Stone - Hobo Ken (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRKadm_8-18
This song likely dates back over a decade, the title is a reference to Sly's manager Ken Roberts (who took over after Kapralik's departure), and Paley claims there was an earlier, much superior version. Sly's organ is foregrounded, along with a familiar wah wah guitar, and in the middle Sly half-heartedly indulges in the old formula of calling out specific instruments for a couple bars apiece (ironically, only his own instruments - organ and harmonica). The mix is a little more open and forgiving, and structurally it's a straight, one-chord funk vamp, with a horn line and backing vocals layered in for detail. The rhythm section is again pretty formulaic and boring. Sly's half-assed lyrics and vocal delivery are merely functional.

183. Sly & the Family Stone - Who in the Funk Do You Think You Are (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsGk3ySxjqM
If Sly didn't have something to recycle (a la "Hobo Ken" from 1970 or so, "Ha Ha Hee Hee" from the "Small Talk" sessions), it seems like all he gave Levine to work with were underwritten scraps like this. The ascending chromatic scale in the intro aside, this is an unforgivably boring disco-rock hybrid built around a bog-standard blues progression, with vacuous lyrics to match. There's some ill-advised production choices, especially the electric guitar and thinly squeezed horns, and some snatches of Sly on electric piano. Sly's contempt for his audience and casual disdain for his gifts feel painfully clear.

184. Sly & the Family Stone - You Really Got Me (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHWLQs2JNNk
The second cover released under the "Sly and the Family Stone" moniker is something of a baffling choice. Maybe Sly just liked the novelty of Davies' II-I-V chord progression. There's some pretty entertaining vamping at the beginning of this track, including some distinctive electric piano from Sly, and then there's a terrible electric guitar slide and the questionable production choices start to creep in. Rhythmically this kind of works, especially towards the end, making reconfiguring the song as a slinky funk tune (including a talkbox in the middle) almost appealing, but it's sunk by the backing band and the mix; the electric guitar, strangled saxophone, and overbearing backing vocals get in the way.

185. Sly & the Family Stone - Sylvester (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8cwLHnwpJY
Driven by a guitar riff lifted from P-Funk and a straight 4/4 mid-tempo funk strut. Bass player also appears to be doing a very energetic Rodney "Skeet" Curtis impression with that bass tone. The vocal hook with the song/album title gets repeated ad nauseam by the generic backing vocals, the horns echoing their melody with some slight variations, but at it's core this is just a boring song with not much to it; the rhythm section throws in the occasional dropped beat to try and throw in some variety. Sly sits in the middle, and his piano playing and singing are generally fine, it's just clear he didn't give any thought to the arrangement. Nothing sticks out as specifically terrible, it's just a snooze.

Are you listening to a a different track? The “Sylvester” I’m listening to on Apple Music is a kind of cool 45 second solo snippet of Sly playing Rhodes and singing about fame and his mother.

Catching up …

Without really disputing anything you wrote, Shakey, I kind of secretly dig “One Way” … it’s just a really catchy little riff and the message of the lyrics are some kind of awesome defiance given what a shambles Sly’s life reportedly was by this point. And yes, you can 100% dream on what Clinton would’ve done with this.

This would appear to be the original of “Hobo Ken” referenced upthread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OLiZX4jMwI

It is a little better—it sounds more like Sly than the Levine arrangements, particularly the horns—but it’s also a minute longer and … I’m not sure it needed to be.

Agree that despite some of the awful production choices there are a few moments on “You Really Got Me” that kind of shockingly come together. But the “I can’t help it” refrain that beats the thing into the ground just kind of kills the momentum.

correction to yesterday's entry
185. Sly & the Family Stone - Sylvester (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovrdVeSrZj0
An unadorned 45-second scrap that sounds like it's mostly improvised, just some gentle piano chords, a drum tapping, and Sly talking about himself in the third person, musing on family and career. Obviously added to pad the album run-time, it nonetheless stands out as a brief callback to more nakedly personal tracks like "Time".

186. Sly & the Family Stone - We Can Do It (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1KcH5m0YlQ
Arguably the most interesting track on the album, just in terms of the playing and construction, although the mix and overall sound is too diffuse and reverb is slathered indiscriminately all over the place. The lyrics just come off as crass.

187. Sly & the Family Stone - High, Y'all (Ain't But the One Way, 1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLCp0SUqZy0
Have you heard that Sly liked to get high? Thankfully this song is a bit more than the tired retread the title and opening section suggest. Instead the track downshifts into a lurching, half-time groove that bears some resemblance to Funkadelic's "Funk Gets Stronger", and shifts back up for the choruses. This track seems to have gotten a little bit more attention in the songwriting department, while it's built around a straight vamp that is only briefly modulated for a bridge section in the middle, it's littered with little organ and synth riffs, vocal lines, and horn licks. Fortunately the poor production choices that mar so much of the album are kept to a minimum here, although whether or not the extended sax solo really adds much is debatable. For once the vocals are blended well, Sly in the lead, even if the lyrics are mostly nonsensical ("how could a would not could not if a would not could not would"? OK, Sly). Performance and mixing-wise this is near the top of the heap for this album, at least it ends on a relatively, er, high note.

Sly never completed another full length album of original material. As a bandleader and driving creative force, this is basically the end. The remainder of his output would find him often relegated to half-hearted walk-on roles in the work of others.

188. P-Funk All Stars - Catch a Keeper (Urban Dancefloor Guerillas, 1983)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMPxjm9K1-Y
At this point, no one in the industry - with the notable exception of George Clinton, who was beset by his own problems - had any real faith in Sly's artistry or judgment, including Sly himself. From here on out, it's a succession of one-offs, random collaborations, and scattered P-Funk appearances. When he does show up, Sly is basically a bystander, a curious figure on the margins. This song isn't bad, more or less a retread of "(Not Just) Knee Deep"/"Freak of the Week" with some retooled synth licks and vocals. Sly has a writing credit and it sounds like his voice pops in for a couple bars, maybe he threw in some lyrics or something.

189. P-Funk All Stars - Hydraulic Pump (Urban Dancefloor Guerillas, 1983)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3QOdzT6EI
Coming off his biggest hit ever, Clinton's 80s cut-n-paste synth funk formula was already in place, and while this starts out sounding fairly "live", by the time the record flips over various new wave touches start to take over the rhythm section and the synthesizers. The arrangement follows Clinton's tried-and-true approach of establishing a groove and throwing everything imaginable on top of it: scatological gang vocals, synth squiggles, heavy metal guitar, heavily processed percussion, weird sound effects, a trumpet line. Clinton may have been on crack by this point but his instincts and (perhaps most importantly) quality collaborators had not deserted him; this is a plenty absorbing dancefloor jam, and the constantly shifting details work to its advantage. Where is Sly on all this, and what did he do to merit his writing credit? Who knows. Apart from George and Philip Wynne, the dizzying mix makes it difficult to pick out individual voices, and it's entirely possible that's Sly on electric piano or some other combination of instruments. As it is, this song is great, but probably not because of Sly."

190. Sly Stone - Eek-ah-Bo-Static Automatic (Soul Man Soundtrack, 1986)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORH8RoKE6qs
Warner Brothers didn't know what to do with him and he didn't seem interested in or capable of doing a full album so they threw some soundtrack work at him. After a three year silence during which he has apparently heard rap music (possibly Schooly D? listen to that angel-dusted digital reverb), Sly diffidently tries his hand at approximating the feel and sonics of it. Clinton recounts the origin of this song in his autobio, which paints a generally sad picture of Sly freaking out in the studio because he was confusing playback in his headphones with an audio hallucination, which was the origin of the title/lyric. Digital production techniques have atomized conventional chord progressions, melodies, and conventional arrangement tricks by this point, so we get clusters of disconnected synth riffs, looped basslines, tons of hard-panned percussion, and lots of rambling vocal lines, everything overdubbed haphazardly. There's no real hook or center, and while it doesn't sound bad, really, it doesn't sound distinctive or exciting either, it sounds aimless. Parsing the lyrics feels like a fool's errand.

191. Sly Stone - Love and Affection (Soul Man Soundtrack, 1986)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMIYj05h-J0
With Martha Davis. To his credit, Sly's vocal doesn't sound phoned in, but the material and production are execrable. Every stupid cliché of 80s pop production makes an appearance, which might be forgivable if there was a decent hook or melody.

192. Jesse Johnson - Crazay (Shockadelica, 1986)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maHadudeqP4
As close as Sly got to Prince, and it at least sounds like it was fun to make. Of his post-P-Funk, 80s-onward appearances, this one is actually at least distinctive and sort of fun, even if it's just an attempt to shoehorn Sly into Prince's re-writing of R&B rules. His appearance in the video was pretty much the last time Sly would appear visibly engaged with music.

193. Sly Stone - I'm the Burglar (Burglar Soundtrack, 1987)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2IgeVl-2b4
Unlike "Soul Man"'s weirdly iconic status as a cultural low point, "Burglar" is mercifully forgotten. This tune is essentially Sly trying to repeat the formula of "Crazay" on his own, and as a result features all the signs o' the times - gated drum machine, orchestral pad sounds, synth bass, anonymous gang vocals, a bank of sound effects. It's a fairly standard gloss on Prince (or maybe Harold Faltermeyer) and Sly at least comes up with a credible vocal hook. The syncopated samples of locks breaking, doors being opened etc. in the middle is a bit much. Not good.

194. Bobby Womack - When the Weekend Comes (The Last Soul Man, 1987)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAAVOmIhJss
Womack, coming off a successful 80s run, throws his old buddy a bone. For some reason, Womack re-recorded this song (the original version was on his previous album "Womagic" from 1986) and turned it into something of a vocal duet with Sly. Sly does his thing, but his vocal range is narrowing and his inclusion comes off like an afterthought.

I have never heard most of this stuff. Supposedly, Sly peaced out in the middle of making the Jesse Johnson video? I can only imagine how difficult it must’ve been to work with him around this time.

The Burglar tune is produced (like the rest of the soundtrack) by Bernard Edwards – agreed it’s not very good and Sly doesn’t have a writing credit. But like the Jesse Johnson thing did putting him in the Prince universe, it’s interesting to hear Sly effectively fronting late-period Chic with the signature bass grooves and Tony Thompson whomp.